The Sacking of God(s)
by The Qing
Summary: First Rule of Showbiz: Always give the people what they want…even if it kills them. A story of victory and despair on the eve of the very first Dark Hour as experienced by a mad goddess and a not-so-mad-yet goddess with questionable connections to the incident in question. Don't worry though, it ends happily. P3/P4 Crossover.


**Summary:** How on earth did those scientists learn about the Fall from the Shadows? Someone told them of course. But enough about that! There's this girl dressed for a funeral in the middle of the city and she has no idea what she's doing there. The punchline? It's only a few minutes 'till Midnight; Mourning.

A story of victory and madness on the eve of the Dark Hour as experienced by a mad goddess and a not-so-mad-yet goddess.

**Author Note:** Spoilers for Persona 3 and Persona 4 The Golden.

_**The Sacking of God(s)**_

"Why am I dressed for a funeral?" She thought as she stood there in the middle of the street, decked out in those white and red robes that she hadn't worn in nearly a century. Her attire was usually more modest and subtle to better blend in with the crowd. The zeitgeist of fashion was ever fickle and shifting, but she had kept pace in maintaining her forgettable aura. Under the veil of unremarkable anonymity, she could eke out man's desires at her undisturbed leisure.

Had someone died then? Someone she knew? She couldn't think of anything like that happening recently. As she thought a bit harder, she couldn't recall anyone she liked well enough that she'd even consider attending their funeral, much less dressed like this. Though it was close to midnight in the city and there were barely any people around her, it was still terribly embarrassing being out there as she was. So she closed her eyes and reached out with her powers to try and find the reason she was there. It was doubtless something of sublime import if it merited her presence and the regression of her wardrobe.

There was a lot of garbage to sort through. Stray thoughts, incessant musings, and carnal fantasies came to her attentions only to be discarded once she saw nothing of real substance in them. She decided on a different approach and delved into the mood of the city. Emotions didn't provide as much detail as thoughts, but could be quite revelatory depending on the circumstances. However, she still couldn't find anything out of the ordinary amidst the usual mixture of frustration, hope, and melancholy. There was a concentration of perverse excitement a few blocks away in some sizable building with just a twinge of resentment to curdle the enthusiasm, but again, nothing seemed out of place.

It all happened so fast after that. The small spark of dissension exploded into passion and everything around it contorted into confusion, anger, and finally fright, as if those around it realized they had committed a terrible mistake. Surprisingly, she could feel those creatures that dwelled in the hearts and minds of man emerge from the maelstrom to silence the hysterics that surrounded them. She sensed a rather large one breaking away from the pack to flee into the night, leaving its fellows to their feast. This dissonant phantom incident of the beings within tearing apart those that dwelt outside their realm was disconcerting, but she was no stranger to such scenes and retained her composure as she was still in public. So fixated was she on staying calm that the nearby chime of a clock failed to register in her ear.

Midnight.

The world soured and convulsed. Velvet black night putrefied into a sickly green and the oceans bled until nary a drop of water remained. The few people around her vanished and were swiftly replaced by upright coffins that seemed to stand sentinel in this diseased land. Then came a sound; the thunder of groaning stone. In the distance it rose, from the land's foundations to its firmament, a coiling, screaming mass of contorted architecture. Structures of different make, size and era slid and slammed into place. Eerie bulbous blue globes swelled to erratically cover its concrete flesh like luminescent boils. The gaps in between the structure's components gave it countless mouths filled with teeth-like columns. Claws formed out of jutting bits of construction. Yet the spectacle of this bound beast of a building still failed to make her falter. Instead her mind raced, trying to figure out what was going on and why it was happening. Then she felt something obscene, a sensation that she, one tasked with escaping attention and notice, dreaded above all things; she was being watched.

Her eyes were drawn upward to what lay above this gleaming, pulsating tower. The Moon had changed form as well. Only, it wasn't the Moon. The Rabbit that was supposed to be on its surface that night was absent. What hung above her felt like something that had replaced it and taken its shape through a rudimentary illusion. Fighting through the disquiet she felt at merely gazing at the sphere, she dared to look through its glamour with her powers. Then she saw what it really was and saw that it was indeed looking at her and she realized that it was useless to try to understand anything because she had known the answer all along. It was okay. This was it; this was what they wanted, what they all wanted since it all began. The thought should have comforted her.

She screamed anyway.

There she was strolling down the streets, looking bemused but not completely pleased. Off came the collar whose lightning she pretended to feel during those interrogations where she told them everything she wanted them to hear. Off went the prisoner robes that they provided to conceal her macabre particulars. Gone were the identification tags, and tossed was the ring she had picked up on a whim from the remains of that once fierce, then broken, now dead aristocrat whose will she had bent through cold touches and even colder words. The young one, the bespectacled buffoon, had all ready been dumped at a nearby hospital; he would live to see this all through at a later date with the promise of kingship still dancing around his gullible little brain.

What reverie! Such unparalleled jubilation! Walking naked, her horror bared on a fake island, during a fake hour, coming out of a fake castle, all constructed from the frailty of man's character. What a sight for those cursed enough to still be up and about in this parody of a moment. Bully for them, with this silence and gore all about her, she felt too at home to preserve even a modicum of modesty.

It had been a shame that people were still alive in these coffins. She practically had those know-it-alls wrapped around her little finger like little red wedding rings. That Takeba…Naughty Man! He would most definitely be at the center of the ensuing fiction; just a little lie, a pronounced scapegoat to keep the wrong people oblivious to what was really happening and give this fresh wound some much needed time to fester. Besides, it's not like he'd be alive to protest otherwise.

Screams and the pounding of feet began filling the air, destroying the tranquility of this lovely quiet world. However, they were not screams of terror or agony like the sort that had so briefly filled the facility she just left. No, they were of a different pitch and taste. As she pondered the sentiment that was behind this wailing, the sound of footsteps grew louder and louder while the screams started to become hoarse with effort. The shrieks persisted, stubbornly refusing to cease even as their strength started to wane. Soon after, their creator appeared with tears streaming down her face and blood coming out of the sides of her mouth from being stretched too far by her pathetic sobs. Her gasps for breath ceased when she saw her, and as the fool charged at her nude form she realized the flavor of her earsplitting cries: Denial.

She was upon her in seconds, straddling her body with her heavily robed form after tackling her to the ground. Her hands found purchase on her neck, taking care that the nails dug into it as she began to squeeze. Profanities spilled forth from her mouth at such speed that they began to blend together in an incoherent quagmire of pure volume. Answers were demanded, different answers, truths that allowed for hope, joy, and wonder to still have a fighting chance in the face of this totality. She tried to strangle her harder, but someone was shouting in her face; she tried to shout back, but something was making it hard to breath. The crimson eyes of her prey changed into a mismatched pair. There was enough breath in her to blow off a strand of grey hair that had been tossed across her mouth in the struggle. Where had her clothes gone?

Despite her best efforts not to look up, the sky was above her again, the tower and usurper moon framing the face of the white robed woman atop her. Then she was looking at the ground once more and her fingers were no longer idle. Her clothes kept coming on and off, but that didn't bother her so much now. The occasion for which she had worn them was now painfully obvious after all.

In between strangling and being strangled, she thought of Honshu, a real island of this nation. A long time ago, she had walked alongside a travelling industrialist from Russia without his notice. Admittedly, she was an expert on the entire country, but seeing an outsider's views and interactions with a land not his own was inexplicably refreshing. He had paused at a merchant's stall to purchase a souvenir that wasn't high art or an antique like his former acquisitions. Nothing managed to capture his interest and he made to leave, but the vendor called him back, bringing a large Daruma to his attention. The foreigner's curiosity was won when the vendor opened the doll to reveal a smaller one with a different expression inside of it. Then he removed the shell of that one to reveal yet another Daruma, making the novelty of this trinket known. It was a doll in a doll in a doll in a doll. The traveler was so delighted that he didn't even bother to haggle when he finally bought the simple curiosity.

A god in a god in a god in a god. Was that what this was? It seemed too inelegant a situation for such an allegory. The ones further in were always more substantial than the ones that housed them, but she couldn't tell who in this violent altercation was, for lack of a better term, more solid than the other. Maybe they weren't like those beautiful little dolls at all, but more brethren to hungry rats thrown in a sack with a piece of meat, ever fighting for the right to kill, eat and rule their equals in that dark, cruel space; hardly a nice thought, let alone an amusing one. Regardless, she laughed. She did too. They all did. Now there was proof that everyone was terrible, weak and stupid. There was nothing left to do but to give up on them.

And that was okay.

Because it was all going to fall down soon enough.

Over their laughter, they could hear the residents of the tower in the way only their weird senses could afford; clawing, pounding, ripping, and squealing for their mother to come down and embrace them for the first and last time.

Poor, hideous, wretched fragments of lost children.

But Mother was right outside in the shadow of the spire.

Vanquished, victorious, and alone with her thoughts.


End file.
